VOA常速英语2019--复古印刷回归美国市场（在线收听）

Alessandra Echeverria, the owner of Typecase Industries, is busy printing a series of postcards. She owns this design and print studio in Washington D C. Here every item is done with antique press machines. So this is a paper cutter specifically made for stacks, I call it the guillotine. So like the same top in there, it comes down the same way. The preparation stage takes more time than the printing. Here’s how it works.

亚历山德拉·埃切弗里亚是签字盘印刷行的老板。她现在正忙着印刷一系列明信片。这家设计和印刷工作室是她在华盛顿特区开办的。这里的所有物品都是用老式印刷机做出来的。这个是专门切割摞纸堆的，我叫它切纸机。就像上面的那个一样，切割的方式是一样的。预热阶段花的时间比印刷要长，它就是这样工作的。

A postcard design is first burned into photographic paper. Then it is transferred onto cards. Echeverria carefully places it under the press so the design appears correctly and precisely on the postcard. There’s no really fancy way to do this. You just get better and faster at guessing where it’s gonna be. With just a handful of paints, Echeverria recreates thousands of hues. She makes paints on the press machine rollers, and only after that starts printing. Echeverria learned the basics about these old machines at university, but it took years of practice to get really good at it. Sometimes if the machines break, she fixes them herself.

设计明信片要先烧制成相纸，然后再变为明信卡片。埃切弗里亚小心地将它放在印刷机下面，这样设计的版式才能准确无误地出现在明信片上。无他，唯手熟尔。只需要几种颜料，埃切弗里亚就能重新创造出上千种色调。他先在印刷机的滚筒上设计图案，然后才开始印刷。他在大学学习了关于这些老式机器的基本原理，但他用数年时间进行实操才真正掌握这项技能。有时候，机器坏了，她会自己修理。

But they’re all pretty basic mechanical things. There’s no computer thinking inside this machine, so something that breaks is a physical thing, so you can usually figure out how to make another one. Echeverria has been printmaking for over a decade, and has mastered a job traditionally held by men. When I talked to people and I’ve gone to city offices or head meetings, sometimes people just probably don’t think I actually run this business or know what I’m talking about or actually run the machinery that’s in this business.

但这些都是非常基础的机械装置。机器本身不具备计算机思考的能力，所以坏的地方是机器本身，所以我们一般能想到如何制作另一个机器。埃切弗里亚做印刷行业已经10多年了，她所掌握的这项工作以前只有男人才能做。每次跟人聊天或者去市政府办公室或者总部开会的时候，有时候大家就觉得我不可能开办了这样一个印刷行，或者压根不懂我们这行，或者不知道我能运作印刷行里的机器。

They’ll walk into the studio and see me working and still not believe that I know what is happening here. Echeverria said one reason her business is so successful is that people like things that are handmade. And then this computerized age of online shopping, she adds, customers really enjoy buying quality goods and products from someone they can meet face to face.

他们走到工作室里来，看到我在工作的时候，也依然不相信他们看到的一切。埃切弗里亚说，她的印刷行之所以办得成功，是因为大家喜欢手工制作的东西。她补充说到，在现在网购成风的电脑化时代，顾客们都很喜欢买有品质的产品，喜欢面对面地看到卖家。